February 28, 2012

Matt Kenseth Wins Fire-Delayed Daytona 500: In a rain-delayed, primetime Daytona 500, Matt Kenseth won a race that featured a cinematic explosion of burning fuel with 20-foot high flames when Juan Pablo Montoya's car collided with a jet dryer, spilling 200 gallons of jet fuel onto the track that ignited. Montoya and the dryer driver escaped serious injury. The two-hour delay to clean and repair the track included a nice product placement for Tide detergent. "It's amazing that NASCAR had enough Tide," said car owner Jack Roush.

Montoya's helmet had a melted place on the outside of it after he climbed out, you know it was hot, jet fuel burns hot enough to bring down towers. He definitely had someone watching over him. Kudos to NASCAR for all the safety features.

The footage of the lap-2 crash that knocked out Jimmie Johnson was pretty amazing too. Someone bumped his left-rear bumper and sent him into the wall, then when he came back down he was hit on the driver's side door by another car that couldn't evade a crash.

In-car video showed Johnson twice releasing the wheel, a tactic the announcer said was learned from Danica Patrick, and crossing his arms over his chest.

rcade: They seriously said that? Fucking hell... THIS is why I hate Danica. There are far more talented female drivers out there, only they don't skank themselves up for their sponsors, and anywhere she races, the coverage fawns over her as if she's special etc...

For fucks sake drivers have been doing that in racing for as long as I've been watching. It's common sense.

I think she's long since sold all her credibility for money. I can't stand her for it, but I can't deny I'd do the same thing in a New York minute. Which would probably get me booed out of NASCAR for being a Yankee.

Plus, there is now a fixation with wanting to see the next episode of Danica snarling her way through the man's world she's in the midst of.

But to begin with, if Danica had even a tenth of the talent in her entire pedal foot that Alex Morgan has just on the outside edge of her left foot and could use it to summon startling and delightful events to occur almost at will, no amount of cheesecake would ever constitute a consuming portion of the overall equation.

All Danica has to do to gain credibility is to win something.... as far as I know she had never won a race in Indy cars either. Most drivers who make the switch at least had some measure of success in their previous class. She has good equipment and ok crew so time will tell on the driving.

No one is going to fault a Nascar driver for marketing. The issue I have is that she's selling herself as cheesecake while claiming it's offensive to view her that way.

I agree, don't make money off of selling with sexy and then complain for being called sexy, if all she wants to be called is pretty then maybe she should do those commercials wearing a below the knee sun dress with a nice floral pattern. But we all know that doesn't sell anything today.

I only have interest in F1, so I have no idea how good her equipment has been compared to her competitors, but there are plenty of drivers with fewer wins than one.

In F1 I think Nico Rosberg overtook Nick Heidfeld recently as the guy with the most points scored without a win, while Heidfeld is still the active driver with the most races without a win at somewhere toward 200 races.

The GoDaddy thing really doesn't help her. Surely they can't be giving her enough money that should couldn't let it go.

In which case I don't see the appeal of that either, because if you're in the market for that sort of thing I have heard that there are other freely available sites on the world wide web where comely ladies show their ankles. Both of them.

I turned on the race a bit late, and heard that Danica was having her rear end rebuilt. I thought it was a Brazilian Butt Lift at first, but then they explained she had been in a wreck and they were talking about her car. I do believe the media has once again exercised the latest version of Tim Tebow, Jeremy Lin syndrome. That is, take something a bit different that has shown some glimmer of success, and hype it as if this were the second coming. When, oh when, will the media actually report facts and substance instead of flash and hype?

While there was plenty "spectacle", I have to say that the racing was quite disappointing. Like most fans, I dislike "tandem" racing. However, I think this was actually worse. As long as there were cars lined up on the inside, the outside line could not pass.

I long for the good ol' days of restrictor plate racing where the last twenty (20) to twenty-five (25) laps were thrilling--with lots of dramatic position changes among the top thirty (30), or so, cars. Instead, there was no suspense--other than whether there would be another wreck--until the last thousand feet.

I long for the better, older days when NASCAR had a rule that anything on the track had to be available in a dealer's showroom. There were amazing things done to the Ford Galaxy 500, the Pontiac Bonneville, Plymouth Duster, Dodge Charger, and so on. Roll cages were built into the cars after purchase, and there was lots of tinkering with the engines, but you could recognize the brand of car at a glance, races were decided by good drivers and good cars, and there were no gimmicks like the "green-white-checkered" necessary. Today's Chevrolets, Fords, Dodges, and Toyotas are no more the brand they represent than I am Carl Edwards.